Microsoft has made several exciting announcements regarding the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into its Bing chatbot and Edge web browser. The most significant of these changes is that Bing users now have free access to the GPT-4 model, which is the same underlying technology that powers OpenAI’s ChatGPT Plus subscription service. Previously, the GPT-4 version of the Bing chatbot was only available through a “limited preview.” But now, users can access it through the Bing app, web access, and Edge browser.
Microsoft has also announced the upcoming support for multimodal outputs, chat history, and plug-ins. Multimodal support will allow the Bing chatbot to generate responses that combine text, images, and videos, and it will also be able to generate charts and graphs, giving it an advantage over ChatGPT. Users will have access to their full chat history, and those using the Edge browser can move chats to the sidebar while continuing to surf the same tab.
Moreover, Microsoft plans to make Bing chat more personalized by bringing context from previous chats into new conversations. The company has also introduced Edge Actions, or Bing Actions, which will feature third-party plug-ins for Bing chat. These plug-ins will allow users to reserve restaurant seats and create complex visualizations for math and science queries. Microsoft says that more integrations will be announced as they are implemented.
Stiff competition between Microsoft and OpenAI
Unlike OpenAI’s ChatGPT Plus service, which costs $20 per month for access to the same GPT-4 model, Microsoft’s new features won’t require any purchases or subscriptions. However, users will need a free Microsoft account to take full advantage of the Bing chatbot’s features. There is also confusion on social media over what seems like a competition between Microsoft and OpenAI. While Microsoft invested $10 billion in OpenAI, it now appears to be offering similar services to ChatGPT Plus.
The cryptocurrency industry has seen a surge of interest in chatbot technology in 2023, with developers building autonomous trading bots on the GPT-4 platform. While it remains unclear how OpenAI and Microsoft plan to balance their offerings, ChatGPT Plus subscribers receive some benefits not available to the general public or Bing chatbot users, including priority access to the system during high traffic periods and faster response times from the model.
